The relation of the subject to the ruling population is the result 

 partly of exterior conditions — as climate, fertility of soil, geographical 

 position, contiguity of hostile nations, and similar causes, more or less 

 beyond the control of man, and exercising by their nature a similar 

 influence on very dissimilar peoples. But, apart from these causes, 

 the fate of a conquered population depends chiefly upon the character, 

 religion, and political ability of the conquerors. The stem hard-heart«d 

 Spartan fixed an impassable gulph between himself and the helot ; he 

 disdained to put to the plough a hand dignified by wielding only the 

 spear and sword ; the Spartans degraded into slaves those whom they 

 might have trained to become by degrees their fellow-citizens ; they 

 forfeited the honour of becoming a powerful nation, by oppressing and 

 enslaving the brave men by whose assistance they might have asserted 

 their supremacy in Greece and the world. The true Spartans watched 

 jealously over the purity of their blood. The genuine Heraclidan race 

 was not to be defiled by an admixture of aliens and subjects ; and thus, 

 by preserving their purity of blood, they dwindled down in numbers 

 and power, while their natural antagonists increased in both. Similar 

 has been the disposition of the Turks ; only, that among them natural 

 ferocity and domineering spirit have been increased in their tendency by 

 religious fanaticism. The true believer thought and thinks himself 

 entitled to rule over the infidel ; there is no connexion between him 

 and the rayah, but that of lord and servant, of governor and subject. 

 By no successive steps can the rayah rise to an equality with an 

 Osmanli, unless he abjure his faith. The Turks, like the Spartans, 

 have founded an empire by conquest, but neither of them have ever 

 coalesced with the conquered — they have maintained themselves as 

 isolated portions of the community, and they have secured their domi- 

 nion by the sword. 



Very difl'erent has been the policy of the Germanic conquerers of 

 Western Europe. They certainly established themselves as masters of 

 the lands they had subdued, and they reduced the old inhabitants to 

 the lower level of subjects, but they were neither actuated by an over- 

 weening opinion of the sacred purity of their blood to doom difl'erent 

 nations to eternal slavery, nor did religious fanaticism draw an impas- 

 sable line of distinction between them and their subjects. Their social 

 arrangements admitted of a great vaiiety of ranks and gradations, and 

 opened to the very lowest the way of gradual elevation in the scale ; it 

 prepared an amalgamation of all the national elements ; it recognized 

 the primeval equality of man ; its tendency was to establish, not the 

 democracy of Athens, which rested upon a substratum of slavery, but 

 the true Christian democracy, which recognizes equality in the eyes of 



